He made no reply, just went on resting his eyes on her. She had no option but to go on.
‘So I wanted to … to ask you … if … if I promise I won’t behave like that again—because I won’t—I really won’t—if … if … you would give me another chance and … and reconsider your decision about the Monte Carlo shoot. My agency told me—’ She swallowed, biting back the emotion that cracked in her throat. ‘Told me that you’d changed your mind about me after all. I want to change it back again,’ she husked. ‘Persuade you to take me back on. I really, really want to do that! And if you did I would be so, so grateful …’
Her voice trailed off. Her mouth was dry. She could feel every high-pressure pump of her heart, every racked muscle of her body. She’d done it—done what she’d come to do. Crawled and begged and pleaded. Abased herself before him. Because downstairs—waiting in the shadows, waiting for her to come out of the hotel—was a madman with a razor, waiting for a chance to use it on her …
‘So very grateful,’ she breathed.
Angelos stilled. Every muscle in his body stilled. The brandy swirling slowly in his glass stilled. Then slowly, very slowly, he started to set it in motion again.
She was gazing at him—eyes wide, distended. Lips parted. Her breasts rising and falling as she breathed. He took it all in, eyes resting on her. There was no expression in them. But inside emotion knifed, its stroke slicing through him. Then he spoke.
‘How grateful, Kat?’
The smoothness in his voice was gone. Instead there was something that, just for a moment, seemed to slither over her skin.
‘How grateful, Kat?’ he said again.
The words fell into the air. She stared at him. Words forming in her mind that she could never say. There’s a psycho down on the street who wants to slash my face open if I don’t pay him what I’ll earn from that shoot—that’s how grateful I’d be! But that wasn’t what she could say. All she could say was, her voice still husky with tension, ‘Very grateful.’
It galled her. Every fibre in her being rebelled at what she was doing—begging, pleading with this man, humbling herself to the man who could save her with a single word, or send her back out on to the street to where Mike waited for her with his razor.
He did it to Katya—he’ll do it to me!
Fear gutted her again—fear laced with a stabbing urge just to yell at this man she was crawling to, yell at him to give her the job back, just give her the job back because she needed it—needed it desperately …
He had set down his brandy glass on the sideboard. His eyes were still resting on her. Veiled, unreadable. She could feel her heart slugging in her chest as she waited for the answer that would save her … or doom her. Desperate hope fused with churning terror …
Angelos watched her. Watched her through the mask of control that had iced over him. But underneath the nameless emotion knifing through him had revealed itself.
Cold, black anger.
Memory bit through him. Her sitting on that very sofa, making that crude, forceful riposte she’d made when he’d baited her about sexual favours in the line of her work. For all its crudity, it had been that that had told him what he needed to know to make the decision about her that he had, knowing that—however hungry she was to obtain modelling work on the marina shoot—she possessed enough raw integrity to reject using her body to advance her career.
And now—
So much for her parade of virtue! Now she was ready to offer anything he wanted to get what she wanted … to show her ‘gratitude’ …
His anger intensified.
He’d wanted her. Made a decision to follow through on what he felt about her that had, against all expectation, piqued his interest. And now he was being balked of it. Balked at this very moment now, at this late hour of the night, in his private suite, when she was standing there, her raw physicality impacting on every nerve ending, that demure, white-collared dress of hers signalling an erotic appeal that was making him compellingly aware of the body beneath, with its small, high breasts, slight hips and long, slender legs. Even the unstyled hair, pushed behind her ears, only framed her face more—that extraordinary face …
He wanted her. And now he could not have her. Because he never, ever indulged a woman who wanted him to advance her career for her … To do so would be to compromise his principles, to give in to a temptation to indulge himself that he would not allow himself. He had too much self-respect, instilled into him all his life, to do as Kat Jones now wanted him to. Anger knifed again. It needed a target.
He walked towards her, stopping dead in front of her. Then lifted his hand. Cupping her cheek with his palm.
Kat froze. Every muscle in her body froze. What was happening? What was he doing? Why—? She could only stare at him, eyes huge, distended. He was too close—far too close. How had he got so close? Why …?
And then, as if her sensory system were working in slow-motion, she felt the tips of his fingers feathering along the line of her hair. A thousand nerve endings shimmered and she gave a tiny strangled gasp in her throat. His thumb moved leisurely, exploringly over the tender lobe of her ear. Faintness drummed at her. Heat flushed up the column of her throat, beating like a wing. Sensation was thrumming through her like fire licking along her flesh …
Nothing else existed. Nothing except what he was doing to her. Touching her, stroking her. He was looking down at her, holding her, enclosing her. Forming her whole world so that nothing else existed at all. Nothing other than this could ever exist …
He was blanking out everything—all consciousness, all memory, all awareness other than this moment, now. Weakness flushed through her, leaving nothing behind. No memory of why she was here, no memory of what had brought her here …
Only this exquisite, unbearable sensation.
He was saying something. She could hardly hear it, but then it penetrated—penetrated through the mesh of sensation he was engendering.
‘How grateful, Kat? This grateful?’ There was darkness in the eyes looking down at her, looking right into her. ‘Or this?’